Extremely Flawed and Incredibly Frail:
The Local American Newspaper
An empirical analysis on the effects of the decline in newspapers on the content of local US newspapers.
Thesis Political Communication Eva Plijter
5931681
Thesis supervisor Yphtach Lelkes
2 Abstract
This research concerns the colossal decline in newspapers in the US in the last ten years, and what the consequences for the content of local newspapers are regarding this phenomenon. Over the past decade the newspaper business has gone from thriving and profit-turning to an industry in full-blown crisis. The age of digitization has changed the game for newspapers and an additional, but rather dominant, financial crisis have left this industry in need to reevaluate itself. The research question for this thesis is: “What are the effects of the decline in the newspaper industry on the content of local US newspapers.” A content analysis was conducted on two newspapers, the Daily News from New York and the Atlanta Journal Constitution, that were once very popular, but are now struggling to keep their readers. Fifty articles per newspaper were coded in 1999, 2006 and in 2013, giving 300 items in total. The results show that changes have taken place since the start of the industry crisis. The amount of local news within the two local newspapers declined over the past fourteen years by 23 percent. The amount of wired articles, via national newspapers or newsgathering
organizations such as the Associated Press, rose by 11 percent in the past fourteen years. The quality and in-depth factors of political articles have also significantly declined since 1999. We can state that the crisis the newspaper business is facing is not only affecting the way the local newspapers operate or stand ground, it also changes the content of the local newspapers. The traditional local American newspaper is hard pressed reevaluate their role within society, to assess how to bring that role and their tasks forward and take that seriously in future.
3 Index
1. Introduction………..4
1.1 Research Question………..5
1.2 Societal and Scientific Relevance………..6
2. Theoretical Framework………...8
2.1 Industry Crisis………8
2.2 Local News………11
2.3 Soft News vs Hard news………...14
2.4 Episodic and Thematic Framing……….16
3. Method……….19
3.1 Operationalization.………...20
4. Results………..23
5. Conclusion and discussion……….31
6. Literature………35
7. Appendix A……….40
4 Introduction
“If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're misinformed.”
Mark Twain
The technological enhancements of the past ten years have left the world to wonder, but where has it left journalism? The rise of the Internet has had detrimental effects on traditional print newspapers all around the world. These effects first became visible in US newspapers, with Europe and the rest of the world to follow (Van der Wurff, 2005). The circulation of daily newspapers fell to 50.2 million in 2007 in the US, its lowest point since 1945 (Meyer, 2009). Between 2008 and 2010, many local newspapers had to shut down, large paper chains declared bankruptcy and many editors and reporters were laid off, pay reductions were imposed, and sizes of newspapers cut or even turned to Web-only publication (Kirchhoff, 2010). The rapid decline in readership has been coupled with a vast reduction in advertising revenues as advertisers switched their products from print to online newspapers or other sources (Graham & Smart, 2010).
In 1998 the regional news business was booming and over 55, 000 people were employed in daily newspaper newsrooms in the US. Nowadays newspaper businesses are trying to survive the crisis and as little as 40,000 people are still holding on to a job in a newspaper newsroom (Waldman, 2011). The development and settlement of the Web 2.0, have resulted in a new generation of younger ‘net natives’, having been brought up with the existence of the
Internet, becoming increasingly unwilling to pay for news and newspapers (Graham & Smart, 2010). The online consumers prefer to read their news agenda in small parts from different news outlets.
5 All of these factors coupled with a capital crisis, created by a volatile stock market, has created an industry crisis for newspapers in general (Picard, 2006). This rapid decline in newspapers, in one of the largest democracies in the world, has caused many concerns amongst scholars and professionals. And not without reason, as news media can best fulfill its functions in a democratic society when the information environment is rich, pluralistic and available to everyone (Norris, 2000). Of course, television news has already taken over a large part of the newspaper as a main news source. However, literature shows that the newspaper is far better in delivering complex and detailed information (Norris, 200). But what effect does this crisis have on the content of news and newspapers? A worrisome trend is that the technological era has introduced a new variety of channels and different kinds of news that have shaken the old order. A shift has been noticed by scholars in political news in the US going from hard and sober news to soft news with an entertainment value (Moy, Xenos & Hess, 2005). Soft news is more sensational, personality-centered and
incident-based than the traditional hard news full of facts and preceding history (Prior, 2003). News these days may need entertainment value instead of facts and information. Combining these trends and assessments it draws a grim picture of the newspaper and journalism industry in the US today.
The decline in newspapers and the dangers for existing journalism has been confirmed and researched in the US. However, how this has affected the content of local newspapers, compared to large national newspapers, has not been researched extensively. This lead to the following research question:
“What are the effects of the decline in the newspaper industry on the content of local US newspapers?”
6 Societal and Scientific relevance
There is a societal relevance to this research; trying to find out what the effects of the crisis in the newspaper industry are is important to the public and government. Citizens have a right to pluralist and easily accessible political information that is independent from politicians and government (Aalberg, van Aelst & Curran, 2010). Such basic rights give citizens the chance to be an optimal part of a democratic society. With a decline in newspapers, and local
newspapers especially, it is important to know what this does to the content of political news in newspapers.
An important task of journalism is to play the role of the watchdog over the government, either local, regional, state or federal. In that watchdog role, the journalists keep an eye on the government, and research whether they are doing their job correctly and look out for the interest of the community (McQuail, 1977). When considering that local newspapers have taken the greatest hits in the crisis, it is easily conceivable that they have had the greatest shifts in political content as well. It is important for society to know whether this shift in content has an impact on reporting on local politics and whether some part of the local watchdog role of journalism may be falling away.
Besides a societal relevance this research has a scientific relevance as well. The decline in newspapers, the shifts in content and changes for traditional mediums and journalism have all been stated by scholars and have been researched. However, as this phenomenon of the industry crisis and shifts in content are still occurring at this moment, an addition to the current literature that is more up to date is always welcome.
Also, the existing research on the subject of newspapers in the newspaper crisis has not focused on local newspapers. The fact that of the disappearing newspapers in the US a large
7 part consists of local newspapers, has been confirmed by research. However, the gross of the research on this subject still focusses on the whole of the industry and does not single out local journalism and politics. The shifts in content, and the amount of wired articles within local newspapers in the US can indicate the future of this type of medium and indicate reevaluations needs to take place.
8 Theoretical Framework
The changes in content of local US newspapers may appear in different aspects, an increase in the use of newspaper wire, a decline in the amount of local political news, a decline in overall quality and depth in political articles, and a shift in the amount of soft- and hard news and the type of framing used. The four sections, into which this theoretical framework is divided, will address all those features. The first part of this chapter will consider the industry crisis of the newspaper business, its history, development and its consequences. The second item will go further into the concept of local news, its background and place within American society. Thirdly the research will explain the concepts of soft news and the idea of
infotainment as a development within US news media. Lastly we will go further into the concept of framing and frames used for political news items.
2.1 Industry Crisis
To understand the current crisis the newspaper industry is in, it is important to know and understand the history of the newspaper itself. The industry has known crisis before the 21st century, such as during the Great Depression and after the introduction of the television. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior (Bentler & Speckart, 1979) and this could very well apply for the newspaper industry.
Historically the decline in newspaper readership has always been attributed to the disinterest of the youth or women joining the workforce (Heider, McCombs & Poindexter, 2005). The newspaper industry has known its ups and downs before now. The popular press took off in the 1830s by creating the ‘penny papers’, having vendors, or ‘paper boys’, selling daily newspapers on the street instead of the previous subscription model (Kirchhoff, 2009). This was a game changer for the industry as well as for advertisers. When subscriptions were the standard model for US newspapers, advertisers knew their audience. With the introduction of
9 selling papers advertising became more commercial, wanting to sell, instead of wanting to inform (Schudson, 1987). The penny papers created an industry that was driven by
circulation and advertisement sales instead of subscription fees and subsidies by political parties. In short, it created the newspaper industry we know today.
The first big hit the newspaper business took was during the Great Depression, which hit the US in 1929. That year the bull market came to an end in the US as more than half of the investors market were trading on margins, funds they did not possess. A mushroom cloud of investment trusts signaled the last phase of the bull market before the bubble exploded in October that year (Rothbard, 1972). For the newspaper industry this meant that advertising revenue fell 45 percent during the period from 1929 to 1933. The recovery for the US market was slow and by 1941 advertising revenue for newspapers was still down 20 percent. Over a third of employees at US newspapers lost their job and hundreds of newspapers went out of business or halted their operations during this period. People turned to radio as a cheaper medium for news during this period (Kirchhoff, 2009).
The second great change for the newspaper industry was the introduction of television in the 1950’s. It only took television a decade to surpass the newspaper as source of news and information. This also meant television snagged a big part of the advertising market.
Television as a medium captured national advertising as its reach was much bigger than the reach of newspapers (Matthei, 1997). The newspaper industry needed a reinvention to survive and business and newspaper chains took over. Family-owned newspapers sold their
businesses to large chains such as Gannett Co, which owned nearly 80 newspapers by 1979. This trend caused the nation’s newspaper groups, approximately 170 of them, to own over two thirds of the dailies in the United States (Neiva, 1995). As this chain ownership grew and the amount of independent newspapers diminished, many cities in the US became one-paper towns. In 1910 more than 60 percent of large cities had competing newspapers, and by 1930
10 this had fallen to 21 percent and diminished even further to little more than two percent by 1971 (Kirchhoff, 2009). Similar to the concerns today, scholars touched upon the worry that this would diminish the watchdog role of the media. Worries for the demise of the traditional newspaper were unwarranted as many papers remained to enjoy a profitable quasi-monopoly status over the next two decades (Kirchhoff, 2009). Advertisement profits for newspapers peaked in 2000 but began to decline rapidly in the years to follow.
The third hit that shook, and is still shaking, the newspaper industry is the age of digitization that began at the end of the 20th century (Carrier, 1997). Besides having a core of news and advertisement, the industry also defines itself by its medium – paper (Muehlfeld, Sahib & Van Witteloostuijn, 2012). Digitization, the rise of the Internet has changed that
fundamentally. Digitization is the process of the online world moving from an experimental and young phase to a structural, continuous mass digital medium, including a great news medium.
In addition we have to consider that the financial crisis has taken its toll on the newspaper industry. It started in 2001 when the mortgage boom started to build up and the house price bubble burst around 2007 in the United States. The credit crunch and the deep recession is still felt globally and overall spending has been cut severely (Martin, 2011). Investments were put on hold in nearly every market, and this included the print industry on a large scale. The technological advances in the past decade have made it significantly easier and cheaper for information to cross great distances and reach interested readers. This means that the access to specialized national media, or high-quality national or international newspapers has increased everywhere. When people have a choice between a large, high-quality national newspaper and a local newspaper the audience for the local newspaper will decline and as a result the product may change accordingly (George & Waldfogel, 2006). As readers who
11 choose a high-quality national or international newspaper tend to be more highly educated the local newspapers may adjust their content to less educated people.
Since the financial crisis traditional newspapers have taken dramatic steps to balance their budget, which includes making the paper smaller, firing staff, reducing printing days and raising prices. By 2008 on average, the newsrooms of daily newspapers were cut by 11 percent in a year and in the first five months of 2009 alone nearly 10,000 journalists were laid-off or offered buyouts in the US (Kirchhoff, 2009). Papers are dismissing their
Washington reporters and the number of reporters covering state legislatures has decreased 30 percent in seven years since the beginning of the crisis (Kirchhoff, 2009).
A relatively cheap alternative for newspapers is the use of wired articles. News agencies, or wire services, gather news reports and sell them to interested newspapers (Paterson, 2005), the Associated Press is a well-known example of such an organization. The costs of taking over published articles are lower than the hiring of reporters (Hamilton & Jenner, 2004). These downsizes have not ceased, journalists are still being fired today and newspapers are still filing for bankruptcy. Therefore the buying of articles from news agencies may become a more appealing option for a lot of newspapers. This leads us to the first hypothesis:
H1: The content in local US newspapers will have more political articles wired from national newspapers or the Associated Press than fourteen years previous.
2.2 Local News
Local news originally earned its name from the local ownership, employing local people as journalists, reporting on local concerns and read by the local community (Franklin, 1998). Nowadays, the name on the local paper may be one of the last features that make it local (Franklin, 1998). After the rise of television news, between 1960 and 1980 the majority of
12 local newspapers were bought up by large newspaper groups. Journalists have become more mobile and are less likely to come from the place they write about. Besides that, the
previously mentioned wiring of articles, newspapers taking over articles that already have been published by other newspapers or the Associated Press, have become a common practice in local newspapers. Local news seems to have lost a large part of its identity (Franklin, 1998).
The merger of many small newspapers to become part of large newspaper groups has taken its toll on local news. Critics and scholars claim that being part of such greater economic entities makes papers shift away from being a base of communication for a community towards being merely a profitable business. This has lead people to believe that news today may be solely motivated by profit (Kaniss, 1991).
There are many ways in which this notion could express itself. Using sensationalism in its news items is one way local news has been accused of driving up sales. This is done by spicing up events to boost ratings or readership. More sophisticated media critics have claimed that local news is in fact censuring the news to protect advertiser interests. Another claim made towards local news is that they bias their newspapers in favor of the downtown business community (Kaniss, 1991).
But why do we need local news at all? News in general not only informs people but has the ability to take a community of individuals and turn them into engaged citizens that participate in politics and democracy (Perse, 1990). Local news is better at this than national news, as local news can be a combination of news and entertainment. Local news reports on local politics, government, crime and events but they mostly use individuals and human interest to make the stories more relatable (Perse, 1990). This leads to stronger affiliation with the community by readers and viewers of local news. They also give citizens the clear
13 information of what they individually can do to become more engaged in the local
community and politics (Perse, 1990). Besides that, retaining information of news is higher with people reading or viewing local news than national news in the US (Perse, 1990). People tend to have more affiliation with local news and recognize better why it is important than they do when reading about national news. They also recognize local news as a reflection of reality more than with national news (Perse, 1990).
Arguably, one of the most important reasons why a democracy needs free media is so that the media is able to fulfill its role as a watchdog over politicians and the government. As
politicians are chosen by the people and work for the people, society should be kept informed on how the elected officials are doing their job. The media is there to make sure politicians do their job properly and when they do not, to report it to the public (Whitten-Woodring, 2009). This is crucial on a large scale, to have enough reporters in Washington in the US reporting on national politics and how the public’s representatives are doing their job, but this is necessary on a local scale as well. The local government in the US stands for the
governmental jurisdiction below the national level of the state and most states have at least two layers of local government; counties and municipalities. Some states even divide their counties into townships. This means that states are divided into as many as 160 counties (Rupasingha, Goetz & Freshwater, 2002). It is the job of local media and especially local newspapers to report avidly and regularly on these local government entities.
The media is often called the fourth estate of political power, as one of the four influences within the political spectrum (van Aelst et al., 2008). And the power of local newspapers can potentially be great. People have more affiliation towards local news, which makes them more susceptible to civic engagement through local news. Besides that, it is known that the path from medium to knowledge is nearly twice as strong for newspapers as it is for
14 According to Kaniss (1991) local news is affected by regional growth or decline,
demographic and political structures and the economic situation. All these factors are either in a state of decline or crisis at the moment. Another important aspect of local news today is the shift in the perception to the idea that local news is merely a business in which profits and advertisement sales can trump journalistic ambitions, instead of the central to local political life and communities (Franklin, 1998). Considering the financial trouble the newspaper industry is in at the moment this does not bode well for local news and may cause the amount of reporting of local news to decrease. This has led to the second hypothesis.
H2: Coverage of local politics will have declined in local US newspapers over the past fourteen years.
2.3. Soft News vs Hard news
Soft news can be defined as the news that is typically more sensational, less time-bound, more incident-based and more personality-centered than other, more in-depth serious news, typically depicted as hard news (Patterson, 2000). In a study by Scott and Gobetz in 1992, a content analysis on soft news between 1972 and 1987, it is made apparent that even though soft news does increase over those 15 years, it is still a small part of the news outlets (Scott & Gobetz, 1992). In fact, research on soft news has only become wide spread in the decade and results on its contribution vary.
Although it may seem so at times, soft news is not as popular as hard news, but it still attracts millions of viewers and readers in the US. This has been encouraged by some scholars, as they claim that soft news can reach an audience that would otherwise not be uninterested in reading any news (Prior, 2003). People who prefer soft news may not be the most politically engaged group of society but they do vote in great numbers, for which soft news can bring
15 helpful information. It can even be suggested that the rise of soft news in the past decades can help lift barriers between the public and politics (Baum, 2002).
There is another side to the sounds of scholars on soft news though. People who limit themselves to soft news items, either newspapers or television, say they follow certain political topics as much as people who follow hard news. However, research shows that in the end people who follow soft news, knew significantly less about those political topics than people who followed the hard news on that topic (Prior, 2003). Because of a lack of provided heuristics, experience-based internal reference points, in soft news people are less tended to learn from this type of news (Prior, 2003). So even though soft news may lead to more people following news items, it may not contribute in political knowledge amongst the public. Other studies show that people do actively refer to soft news items to make political decisions such as voting. When soft news is filled with humor and satire it seems to encourage people’s intent to vote during US elections (Moy, Xenos & Hess, 2006). European studies show that particularly oppositional parties take advantage of soft news, by using sensational one-liners and putting party personalities forward (Korthagen, 2011). Soft news can broaden the audience for news, but gaining factual knowledge is less likely than with hard news. Soft news can be taken advantage of by politicians playing a sensational game and finally, people are less likely to learn from soft news (Korthagen, 2011; Prior, 2003).
In a research conducted amongst US journalists in 2004 roughly half of them felt that journalism was going in the wrong direction and that same amount felt that there were increasing problems with quality broadcasting. Problems with quality broadcasting include factors as difficulties in accurate reporting, a lack of depth or context, sensationalism and softer news and a missing balance in reporting (Plasser, 2005). These notions of soft news
16 and a questioning of the quality of current news leads us to the third and fourth research questions:
H3: The political content of local US newspapers will have more soft news than fourteen years ago.
H4: The overall quality and in-depth factors of political news will have declined in local US newspapers over the past fourteen years.
2.4 Episodic and Thematic Framing
Framing is theory that has been used widely within the study of communication science. It has also been explained in many different ways by many different scholars. To avoid confusion, the definition by Entman (1993) of frames will be upheld: “To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and to make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation.” (p. 52.). By this definition, framing is a way in which the mass media presents news that can systematically affect, or frame, how
recipients come to understand those events.
Thematic and episodic frames are specific ways in which media can present news to
influence the reception of this news. The thematic and episodic frames relate to the emotional response people can have to news and are issue specific (Gross, 2008). Both frames are particularly relatable to political news and interesting to political journalists. The episodic frame presents an issue on the basis of a specific example or case study. When this frame is used, a story on a raise in taxes could be accompanied by an example of how one particular family is affected by these taxes. Thematic frames, however, present a news story with the broader context or background. A story on a raise in taxes would then therefore be
17 taxes. These are particular frames journalist can use to make a story understandable, readable and accessible for their readers (Gross, 2008).
Episodic frames tend to be more emotionally engaging for people, which is why it is more appealing for journalists to use it. However, when episodic frames put news items into situational perspectives it alters the view of the issue. This frame can divert the attention of the readers away from societal responsibilities of political issues and make people focus on the individuals in the examples or case studies given (Iyengar, 1991). Research shows that individuals who are exposed to a steady stream of episodic frames in news are more likely to fail in seeing connections between news items that are reoccurring subjects. This would then have an impact on the way these people viewed political policy on subjects such as poverty and welfare and crime and police spending (Iyengar, 1991).
Another important aspect of the use of the episodic frame by political journalists is that this frame minimizes attitude change. People are less prone to see connections between political issues within different episodic news stories, and the focus is drawn to emotional and
individualistic characters of the examples or case studies. This drives the concern away from the political issues (Gross, 2008). When political news items minimize attitude change it could therefore also minimize political involvement and participation. An interesting note is that the emotional response of people towards the news story does not depend on the political subject but on the individuals featured in the examples or the case studies (Gross, 2008). This means that people still can be persuaded through episodic frames but that it depends on the emotional load the story accompanying the news items carries.
With readership of newspapers going down, and the competition between media outlets is becoming bigger and more scattered by the minute, it is to be expected that journalists want their stories as accessible as possible. By adding the emotional factor, political news stories
18 become more attractive, more accessible en more relatable to people. This type of frame has the ability to minimize political attitude change and that peoples emotional response towards the news item. People are less likely to see connections and themes in news items this could alter the view of the political system.
Another downturn of the episodic frame is that the frame evokes individualistic attributions to stories such as economic strains or crimes. It emphasizes the action of the individual instead of the political actors and this weakens the accountability of elected officials (Iyengar, 1996). By making the action of the individual more important than the accountability of politics, the media may be losing its value as a watchdog on the government. This research leads us to the fifth and final research question:
H5: The amount of episodic frames will have risen within political stories in local US newspapers over the past fourteen years..
19 Research Method
This chapter will elaborate on the methods used to conduct the empirical research to support this paper and to test the hypotheses. To find out more about the content of local US
newspapers, the choice for a content analysis is obvious. An overview will be given over the content analysis, the samples of newspaper items taken and an operationalization of the concepts in the content analysis.
Two local US newspaper were chosen to perform this research on. The Daily News, a local newspaper from New York, is one of the largest local daily newspapers in the United States and although it has been affected by the industry crisis, it still remains one of the most successful newspapers in America. The other newspaper, the Atlanta Journal Constitution from Atlanta, is the most successful newspaper of the South of the US but has been hit much harder by the newspaper industry in the number of printed copies. The paper used to be in the top-10 of highest circulation newspapers within the US, but circulation has been cut by half in the last fourteen years. In table 1 the newspapers and their respective circulation numbers are shown to illustrate the decline.
Table 1: Newspapers and circulation
Newspaper State of origin Circulation 1999 Circ. 2013
Daily News, The New York, NY 729,449 516,165
Atlanta Journal Constitution Atlanta, GA 365,011 156,227
This divide in newspapers is important to the research. It is expected that the Atlanta Journal Constitution will have been effected by the changes suspected in the hypotheses earlier and more clearly than the Daily News New York. The idea behind this expectation is that since
20 the Atlantic Journal has been affected more severely by the crisis, both in circulation and popularity, than the Daily News, the Atlantic Journal would be affected by changes in content caused by the industry crisis sooner and more seriously. Putting these two newspapers next to each other gives the opportunity to see whether any changes within the content of the local newspapers will differ between each other.
For this analysis a codebook was developed (see Appendix A) to be able to answer the hypotheses. For each newspaper we took one week in 1999, 2006 and 2013. These particular years were chosen because they were free of highly emotional and politicized event
presidential elections or the event of September 11th 2001. The six years interval indicates the time in which the newspaper business was still booming in the twentieth century and the first effects of crisis, and the second six year interval should indicate the time in which actual crisis hit the industry combined with digitization taking over. Each year one seven-day week was coded, the same week for each newspaper to avoid ulterior influences for the two newspapers.
In total 300 singular news articles were coded. Within this data, the overlarge part of the stories referred to national politics (N= 300, M=1.5, SD= .50). The newspaper articles, that were obtained via LexisNexis, were found by searching for political articles in the categories of Politics, Government and Public Administration, Government Bodies and Offices,
Elections and Politics or City Government. It was possible to find 50 articles on these categories in each newspaper in each year.
3.1 Operationalization
To conduct a content analysis a codebook must be fashioned. The codebook used for this research was based on several codebooks created for American politics. There was not yet an existing codebook to answer the specific hypotheses of this research and this newly
21 developed codebook could now be a starting point for further research via content analysis on American politics in newspapers. The codebook consists of a total of 16 questions based on the type of article or subject matter and quality. Only articles with a political content, either local, national or international politics, were coded. To clarify, by local politics, the
categories regional and local politics are used. State and federal politics are both considered as national politics.
The first section of coding entails the type of article, in which is decided where the article is from and give an indication of the length and the depth of the article. The first of which was the code for the source of the article, to know whether the article was wired via Associated Press or whether it was original content of the newspaper. Newspapers are required to
mention this. Secondly, the number of words, or word count was to be noted for each article.. The second section of codes will give an idea of the subject matter of the article and the political content. As a third primary value the subject of the article was coded. This would concern three types of subject, either local, a combined subject of local and national, or national politics. This would depend also on the type of political officials named. The type of government officials named within the subject of the article are coded next. This code is divided into six categories [6, members of municipal government, 5, mayor, 4, members of parliament, 3, members of cabinet, 2, Senators, 1, President, or former President of the Unites States]. To assess the length of the article the number of government officials named were also noted. The type of political news is coded, and this code is also divided into six categories [6, international and local, 5, international and national, 4, international, 3, national, 2, national and local, 1, local].
The third section of codes, combined with the first section, gives us more an idea of the article itself and the quality. In this section the type of frame, either episodic or thematic, and
22 the amount of sources which can also be an indication of quality and depth within an article. The seventh value coded is the amount of sources, of which the number should be counted and copied into the data. The number of sources named in an article shows how many people the journalist approached to give different sides or opinions on a news story. Therefore it gives an indication of the quality of the article, and the depth. The eighth code is to assess which frame is used in the political article, episodic or thematic. The episodic frame is used when an article is presented with a case study or example of an individual, when the news story is presented as an isolated incident. The thematic frame is used when the news item is put into the broad context of the political issue and is related to previous and future political news items or policies.
23 Results
In this chapter the results of the analysis will be discussed per each hypothesis. More tables and crosstabs to illustrate the results can be viewed in Appendix B.
In table 2, two bar charts are visible to illustrate the changes in wired and non-wired articles over the years. These charts illustrate the results of the first hypothesis: The content in local US newspapers will have more political articles wired from national newspapers or the Associated Press than fourteen years previous. By asserting during coding whether the articles came from Associated Press or were original content, a good overview can be given of a rise or decline over the years.
As is clearly protrayed in this table, we can see a decline in original content within the two newspapers analyzed. In 1999 both newspapers equally have 80% of original content, and 20% of wired articles from Associated Press or national newspapers. There is little change in 2006 for the New York Daily News newspaper, but a shift is already visible in the Atlanta Journal Constitution as they introduce almost five percent more wired content to the political
24 articles. In 2013 the changes are clear in both newspapers. In total, wired content in both newspapers increased by more than ten percent, from 20% to 31% in fourteen years. This change is clearly visible when performing a crosstab analysis and in the bar chart, however, when performing a Spearman Chi-square on this data no significant effect is found 2(1, N = 300) = .64, p = .25.
When performing another Pearsons Chi-square, but only in relation to the date and wired or non-wired content for the Daily News New York newspaper we can see that there is no significant change (p>0.05). In fact, in 2006 the percentage of non-wired news stories
actually rises by 2 percent. Then in 2013 that amount drops by 12 percent in the following six years. The changes are only visible from 2006 onwards and when testing for the Pearson Chi-square, again, no significant effect is found (p>0.05). A contrary to the Daily News, the Atlanta Journal Constitution shows more gradual decline in original content. Between 1999 and 2006 the newspaper already adds nearly five percent of wired content and in 2013 this adds up to a total of fourteen percent added to the wired content. Again, however, the Pearsons Chi-square test did not turn out significant (p>0.05). The first hypothesis is therefore rejected.
The second hypothesis of this research: Among political news the subject of local politics will have declined in local US newspapers over the past fourteen years gave more definitive answers. In Table 3, again a bar chart is shown to make the changes over the years for each newspaper more visible.
As is visible below, the amount of local news in local newspapers diminishes and the amount of national politics mentioned have clearly increased since 1999 for both newspapers. In that year 55% of the coded articles concerned local politics, this means that they reported on the mayor, local government, local politics.
25 Less than half of all articles, 41% reported on national politics and only a small amount wrote about a combination, such as the President or a senator reprimanding the mayor of the local city. Both newspapers reported mostly on local politics, but the Atlanta Journal Constitution devoted the most space to local politics between the two.
Looking six years further, this has already changed in a significant and obvious way. The amount of reports on local politics in 2006 in both newspapers dropped by 11 percent. The number of reports on national politics rose 6 percent, and the number of combined local and national reports also rose. The combined news of local and national politics actually only occurs in the Daily News New York newspaper. The amount of national news rose in both newspapers in total to 48% of all content.
In the year 2013 the differences in news coverage become even clearer. The total amount of local news falls even further to 32% of the coverage, dropping to just 12 percent of the coverage within the Atlanta Journal Constitution. In total 64% of the total political coverage
26 was on national news, which is a rise of 23 percent since 1999. The rise in national coverage within the Atlanta Journal Constitution is most astounding, with a rise of 19 percent in fourteen years. The change in the Daily News has been more gradual.
When performing a Pearsons Chi-square analysis on the data, a significant effect was found. Taking in all data, the test was significant 2(1, N = 300) = 6.17, p<0.05
.
Chi-square tells us something about the distributions of the type of political coverage over the years. This result means that the year in which the coverage is done in each newspaper attributes to the type of political news that is written about. In other words, the change in political coverage over the years has gone through statistically significant changes. When looking more specifically for changes between the two newspapers no significant effect was found (p>0.05). The second hypotheses is supported.The third hypotheses concerned the kind of political news featured in the local newspapers. Hard and soft news were examined to find out whether: The political content of local US newspapers will have more soft news value than fourteen years ago. The content of the political article was analyzed and asserted whether the orientation was substantial or sensational. An overview of the changes over the years is given in form of a Bar chart for each newspaper in table 4.
When looking at table 4, it is clearly visible that the amount of sensational, or soft news, versus hard news has not changed very much over the years. In fact, when we look closely, a slight increase in hard news is visible. In 1999 the amount of hard news over both local newspapers was 77% and fourteen years later in 2013 the amount of hard news in both newspapers is 79%. When performing the Pearsons Chi-square test on these results they do not give a significant result 2(2, N = 300) = .00, p = .99.
27 With the null-hypothesis being that no changes have been taking place over the years
concerning hard and soft news, is verified. This means that the third hypothesis is rejected. This does not seem to be different between the newspapers and when performing a Pearsons Chi-square test it is, again, not significant (p>0.05).
The fourth hypothesis concerned the overall quality of the content of newspapers: The overall quality and in-depth factors of political news will have declined in local US newspapers over the past fourteen years. The overall quality and in-depth factors was measured by the word count of the articles and the amount of sources. To find out whether a rise in the quality had taken place, a Linear Regression Model was used on the new variable over the years that were measured. With this model we can assess whether the quality of the newspaper articles have either increased or decreased. When performing the Linear Regression test the fourth hypothesis was accepted, β= -0.17, t(300) = -2.99, p<0.00. This means that over the years the amount of sources used, to indicate a certain quality, and the word count, to indicate a depth of the article, diminished in the past 14 years since 1999.
28 From the Bar chart in table 5 it is visible that the quality diminishes over the years. When creating two dummy variables from the variable DATE, making the distinction between the interval in the years between 1999 and 2013, and 1999 and 2006. A Linear Regression Model was performed on these variables and the variable Quality, only the variable 1999 to 2013 is significant β= - 0.14, t(300)= -2.43, p<0.05. When looking for a regression in the period between 1999 and 2006, no significant effect was found (p>0.05). Hence, the fourth hypothesis was supported.
The fifth and final hypothesis concerned the two frame types, episodic and thematic frames over the years between the different local newspapers: The amount of episodic frames will have risen within political stories in local US newspapers over the past fourteen years. An overview of this shows the changes over the years in table 7.
29 Looking at the results from 1999 to 2013, we can see that little has changed. What stand out is a sudden rise in 2006 for the Daily News New York newspaper for episodic framing. In six years the amount of episodic frames rose by seven percent, but then declines by eight percent in the following six years by 2013. This outcome could be further researched as it is a very specific rise for one newspaper.
This makes for somewhat different results. When performing a Pearsons Chi-square on the data as a whole no significant results are found χ2 (1, N=300)= 2,35, p=.31. However, when looking at the results for 2006 solely for the Daily News New York paper the results become very nearly significant χ2 (2, N=300)= 3.41, p=0.07. All other individual years or the same test on the Atlanta Journal Constitution deemed not to be significant (p>0.05). This glitch in the data is an interesting phenomenon that should be looked at further.
Interestingly, from these results we can, in some ways, confirm the notion that the Atlanta Journal Constitution would be affected more deeply by the changes in content throughout the years. Of course, not all hypotheses were accepted but the ones that were did confirm a stronger change in the newspaper from Atlanta than the paper from New York. For the result
30 of the first hypothesis, the Atlantic Journal reported a twelve percent drop in the subject of local politics within the political articles from 1999 to 2013. The Daily News for New York only had a five percent drop in the same time period. When discussing the rise in wired newspaper articles, the Atlantic Journal was not necessarily impacted more, a five percent rise compared to a four percent rise for New York, but the Atlantic Journal was impacted first. It could be seen in the data and the crosstab that in 2006 a rise in wired articles was already visible for the Atlantic Journal Constitution, that was not yet the case for the New York newspaper. In these two cases at least we can assess that, as the Atlantic Journal Constitution is having a harder time during the newspaper crisis than the Daily News, the Atlanta Journal is applying changes to their content sooner and more severely than the Daily News.
31 Discussion and Conclusion
Traditional journalism and newspapers have been under hard times these past few years. We have all been aware of the major struggles newspaper companies are having to deal with to keep afloat. But what effects lie underneath the surface of these struggles? It is important to know what the effects of the changes in the industry are on newspaper content, to ensure that newspapers and traditional journalism still upholds its original objectives. A content analysis was conducted to research whether a change in content could be indicated within fourteen years in two local newspapers.
Before mentioning the limitations and rendering a conclusion, all results will be discussed to help answer the research question. The first hypothesis predicted that the amount of wired articles within local newspapers on politics would have risen in the past fourteen years. The hypothesis was not supported but when looking solely at the numbers it was clearly visible that the amount of wired articles, from the Associated Press or national newspapers, had risen from 1999 to 2013. In total this amount of wired articles for both newspapers rose by 11 percent. When running statistical analyses this was not significant, perhaps a consequence of the small sample of articles. But the fact remains that in both local newspapers the amount of wired political articles has risen within fourteen years. This indicates that the original content of local newspapers is diminishing and that local newspapers are saving costs and time by simply printing wired news. This endangers the purpose of an individual local newspaper and does not do the media landscape any justice. We can assess that the Atlantic Journal Courier was affected more strongly than the Daily News. Not necessarily in numbers, but in time. The Atlanta Journal had already had a strong rise of nearly 10 percent in wired content by 2006. This confirms the notion that the smaller local newspaper adjusts its content to the crisis more quickly and severely.
32 The second hypothesis stated that the amount of local politics in local US newspapers would have diminished in the past fourteen years. This was confirmed and in fact, was more
relevant for the Atlanta Journal Constitution than for the Daily News New York. The number of articles dedicated to local politics within political news in local newspaper has fallen by 23% from 1999 to 2013. This indicates that the local newspapers of today want to
accommodate a larger audience and mimic the national newspapers. This drop was much more prominent in the smaller local newspaper the Atlanta Journal Courier, which can tell us that local newspapers that are struggling will make such changes even faster and more drastically than local newspapers who are still successful such as the Daily News. This can have consequences for the watchdog role journalism holds over the local governments. The third hypothesis claimed that the amount of soft news would have risen in the past fourteen years. Traditional hard political news would diminish to accommodate a larger audience for the local newspaper. This was, however, not the case. The number of articles in both local newspapers containing hard and soft news remained roughly the same since 1999 to 2013. Of course, we cannot predict what will happen to political news in the future, but for now there should be no worries that soft news is taking over politics in newspapers.
The fourth hypothesis tested concerned the overall quality and depth of political newspapers. This was measured by taking the amount of sources mentioned and the length of each article. The prediction was that this would diminish over the past fourteen years, which was
statistically confirmed. Not only do sources named go down, the length of articles also decreases. This is not a good sign for journalism in the US. Whether this is a good indicator of overall quality is up for discussion, but noting that since 1999 long articles and various sources are less common does show us a change in the way journalists report on political news today.
33 The fifth and final hypothesis stated that the episodic frame would be used more and more in the past fourteen years and that the thematic frame would be used less. This was only
partially supported. When looking at 1999 and 2013, little has changed and the amount of episodic and thematic frames remain roughly the same. However, in 2006 a small rise in episodic frames of 7 percent in the Daily News New York occurs, which rights itself in 2013 again. This shift is statistically relevant and should be further investigated. Overall though, little to no changes have taken place in the use of thematic and episodic frames in local political news.
Before applying these answers to the research question, some limitations must be mentioned. Although a content analysis is very systematic and public, it is also open to interpretation. The size of this research and the limited time available made the option of a second coder inconvenient. This endangers the validity of the research. Another downside to the size and time limits to the thesis was that the sample of articles coded was 300 items. The size of the sample not being that big complicated the statistical analysis and thus also implications for the validity of the research.
Besides that, there were problems with conducting research on local American newspaper whilst in the Netherlands. LexisNexis holds a very large archive of newspaper from all over the world but this does limit the choices of newspapers to use. The research could have had very different results when using a very small local newspaper from Alabama that may have on the brink of bankruptcy and comparing that to a strong and larger local newspaper from the same area. Such comparisons were not possible due to the lack of online archives and the distance from the US to the Netherlands.
This leads us to our research question: “What are the effects of the decline in the newspaper industry on the content of local US newspapers.” We have tentatively answered this in the
34 section above. We can now affirm that changes are indeed brought to the political content of local newspapers. Not only is the amount of articles on local politics in local newspapers falling, the amount of wired articles is rising, and the length of articles and amount of sources is going down.
When putting all of these results together it gives us a sharp image of what has happened to local news since 1999 and what it looks like today. With an industry that is still adapting to the digitized era and is still recovering from the financial crisis, we can only assume that these changes are an ongoing trend until local newspapers have found a stable place. But while the industry is still adapting and recovering it should consider the consequences of those changes.
Local newspapers should take their watchdog role on their local governments seriously, and the same goes for the role they play in creating and informing their community. When local journalism slacks on this subject, one of the fundamental reasons for its existence falls away. Knowing that newspapers are just copying articles from the Associated Press or national newspapers dissolves the need for separate local newspapers. And the fact that quality and depth of political articles is falling is another nail in the coffin of local newspapers. To finalize this grim view of local newspapers in the US, after this study it seems that
changes in content affect the smaller, less stable newspapers the quickest and the hardest. It is seems that print papers are being crushed by the era of digitization and need to start standing their ground. Newspapers, and local newspapers especially, need to decide what their role is in the current media landscape, pursue that role and take it seriously. Only then can local newspapers in the US report and inform their community about politics as they should.
35
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40 Appendix A
December 4th , 2013
Project: Codebook for Master Thesis. Local Governments/Investigative Journalism/United States of America.
Identifying Information in newsarticle
1. Coder ID (CODEID): Identification of who is coding 1 = Eva Plijter
2. Source (NWSPSOURCE): Code whether the article comes from either The Daily News (New York) – 1, The Atlanta Journal Constitution (Georgia) – 2.
3. InvocationID (INVOKEID): Each article will be numbered (1-200), and each text will have line numbers added. INVOKEID only has to be text number, line number of invocation, followed by number _1, _2 etc. This corresponds to the order of multiple invocations on the same line.
4. Date (DATE): The date the newsitem was published
Primary Variables
5. Article Source (ARTSOURCE): Code whether the article is wired or original.
6. Length of article (WORDCOUNT): Copy paste wordcount from LexisNexis.
7. Number of articles per newspaper relate to politics (POLARTS): Copy number from LexisNexis.
8. Newspaper of origin (NWSP_ORG): Coder will write in name of newspaper when mentioned (TEXT FIELD). This only when necessary.
41 Article Subject Code Local politics 1 Combination (Local & National politics) 2 National politics 3
10. Government officials named (GOVT_OFF): Government Official Code President 1 Senator 2 Members of cabinet 3 Members of Parliament 4 Mayor 5 Members of municipal government 6
11. Number of Government officials named: Copy number of government officials named in article.
12. Type of political news (NWSTYPE): Article Subject
Code
42 Local & National 2 National 3 International 4 International and National 5 International and Local 6
13. Amount of sources (SOURCES) named: Number covering the amount of sources used by journalist.
14. News Orientation (NEWSORIENT): Article covering either hard or soft news Type of news Code
Hard 1
Soft 2
Combination 3
15. Amount of sources (SOURCES) named: Number covering the amount of sources used by journalist.
16. Type of framing (FRAMETYPE):
Article Frame Code
Episodic 1
43 Appendix B
